


struggle to breathe / breathe

by notquiteaghost



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Trans Female Character, Gen, Nonbinary Barry Bluejeans, Stolen Century, Trans Man Magnus Burnsides, WIP Amnesty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-06-02 06:03:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19435411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notquiteaghost/pseuds/notquiteaghost
Summary: He shouldn’t be so stuck on Lup’s clothes, the knee-length full circle skirts and how they swish when she walks, the jackets and how they sit just on her waist, her nails that change colour so often, the line of her shoulders, it’s not even that she’s one of the most beautiful people he’s ever seen. He can handle that, that’s not why he stares so long Magnus has started raising knowing eyebrows at him.That’s not why he can’t focus on anything else when Lup sits on the kitchen counter and uses the shiny metal cabinets as a mirror for her eyeliner. That’s not why he lies awake at night, brain caught on the whole conceptual idea of short shorts over leggings.He knows that’s not what this is. He knows it’s something else. He just doesn’t knowwhat.





	struggle to breathe / breathe

**Author's Note:**

> so **this fic isn't finished and probably never will be** , i'm marking it as complete but it just kinda. ends. it's been sitting in my docs as-is for two damn years, tho, and i'm proud of what i have written. so: here

It’s not like– Barry’s not some sheltered recluse, this isn’t his first time meeting a trans person. Or, y’know, obviously he hadn’t managed three decades of city living without meeting a single trans person, but. Knowingly, this isn’t even his first time _knowingly_ meeting a trans person. He has no excuse for this bullshit his brain has spent the last week spewing.

Because, so, Lup? _Exactly_ his type. Confident, sarcastic, really fucking smart, willing to talk about nerdy science shit with him for literal hours, adorable, legs for days, _way_ out of his league. So completely and entirely out of his league there’s no point even putting the effort into quantifying just how out of his league she is.

And she’s not even the first trans person he’s been into! His social circles have been queer as hell since he started college, this isn’t– this shouldn’t be _getting_ him like this.

He shouldn’t be so stuck on Lup’s clothes, the knee-length full circle skirts and how they swish when she walks, the jackets and how they sit just on her waist, her nails that change colour so often, the line of her shoulders, it’s not even that she’s one of the most beautiful people he’s ever seen. He can handle that, that’s not why he stares so long Magnus has started raising knowing eyebrows at him. 

That’s not why he can’t focus on anything else when Lup sits on the kitchen counter and uses the shiny metal cabinets as a mirror for her eyeliner. That’s not why he lies awake at night, brain caught on the whole conceptual idea of short shorts over leggings.

He knows that’s not what this is. He knows it’s something else. He just doesn’t know _what_.

“Hey, you okay?”

Magnus is stood in the doorway to the common area Barry has a little bit completely taken over with his research notes. Notes that he hasn’t so much as glanced at in gods know how long, judging by the concerned look on Magnus’ face.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m–” Barry drops his head onto the table, buries his hands in his hair and realises he does not have the energy to pretend right now, “I’m not fine at all, actually? No I’m not okay, I’m incredibly not okay, I think I’m having some kind of crisis?”

Magnus steps into the room proper, letting the door whoosh shut behind him as he digs out the other chair from underneath a frankly shameful number of books and sits down adjacent from Barry. Magnus is really good at knowing just where Barry’s personal space bubble is.

“Like, a ‘oh gods our whole world is dead and we’re going to die too’ kind of crisis? Or have you managed to find something else?”

“Something else?” He can’t stop all his sentences coming out as questions.

“Well, gold star, bud, that must’ve took some trying,” Magnus says with a grin, before coming over all concerned again. “You up to coming right out with it, or should I start listing things off and you say when?”

Gods, Barry appreciates Magnus so much.

“I, um– I. I don’t really know?” He twists his head so his face is pressed into the table. The metal is nice and cool, but it doesn’t help him form sentences. “If I try and explain it’s just gonna make me sound like an asshole.”

“Buddy, trust me, that is not something you need to worry about. Remember last cycle when you helped Taako hide all of Merle’s left shoes? I already _know_ you’re a dick.”

“That was real reassuring, thank you so much.”

“I try. Now, c’mon, out with it, before one of the others senses this drama potential and our chances of a nice, comfy heart-to-heart are completely destroyed.”

Barry lets out a long groan. He should've just fucking lied, he’s an idiot. He’s an _idiot_.

“I keep– This isn’t about what it sounds like, okay? I keep, um, I’ve been thinking about Lup. Like, a lot?” He lifts his head up, because emotionally confessing to a tabletop feels ridiculous and also not knowing what Magnus’ face is doing is killing him. “And, okay, I have a crush on her, that’s– we know this, it’s fine, but it’s not. Why? I’m thinking about her? I keep– I keep– Fuck.”

Magnus nods at him encouragingly. Barry contemplates jumping out the airlock.

“I’ve barely even articulated this to myself, okay, is how much effort it’s taking to tell you this right now. _Fuck_.” He scrubs a hand over his face - he needs to shave, shit. “I– I keep thinking about her clothes, okay, and there’s no way to say that without sounding like a creeper but I kinda can’t tell if I wanna be _with_ her or _be_ her and– ...Oh. _Oh_.”

“Ding ding ding, we have a winner?”

“I think I’m gonna throw up.” The ship is spinning, it feels like the ship is doing a barrel roll, everything’s blurry all of a sudden, shit. Shit. _Shit_.

“Oh hey, hey, no, it’s okay,” and suddenly there’s warm arms wrapping tight around his torso and then he’s being gently coaxed to the already-well-worn couch and curled into Magnus’ side, and usually this much physical contact he didn’t initiate would make him nauseous but he already feels nauseous so somehow it’s doing the opposite. Also he might be crying? “Hey, hey, you’re okay, you’re good, you did good. You did so good, bud, I’m so proud of you, I’m so incredibly proud of you. It’s okay, it’s okay, you’re okay.”

It takes another couple minutes of Magnus murmuring comforting platitudes until Barry can catch his breath enough to form words, which. Cool, great, definitely wanted to spend his afternoon sobbing in the arms of a man he’s only just feeling comfortable calling a friend. Fantastic.

“I feel so stupid, fuck.”

“Hey no, none of that,” Magnus says immediately, chastising but gentle still, like Barry is a puppy who just put a candy bar wrapper in his mouth. “You are not stupid, you’re the Head Science Officer on our world’s first space exploration mission, they don’t hire idiots for this.”

“I’m thirty six goddamn years old and I’m having an identity crisis.”

“I was dead certain I was a girl until my early twenties.”

Barry can’t stop himself making an incredulous face. “Aren’t you still _in_ your early twenties?”

“I’m twenty-seven, but thank you.” He ruffles Barry’s hair, then reaches into a pocket and pulls out a handkerchief, so Barry has to bite back a joke about is he sure he’s not eighty-seven. “And there’s no age limit on realising things about yourself, buddy. Shit’s complicated, and repression is _real_ easy.”

Barry huffs a laugh. “Yeah, you’re telling me.”

“So. Not wanting to break you completely, I’m ending this conversation now, okay? I’m here if you wanna talk later, but you should process stuff on your own first, probably. I was actually coming to see if you wanted in on this new card game Cap’n’port came up with?”

“That– That sounds good, yeah.”

“Great!” Magnus pushes himself off the couch, then hauls Barry up by the arm, because the couch is the saggiest thing in the multiverse and has a tendency to try and eat people whole. “You working on anything cool?”

“Is the variations between arcane laws in each world we’ve visited cool?”

“Well, I mean. If you asked… anyone on this ship except me, yeah.”

“You asked what I was working on!”

“And you should know by now I only care if it involves dogs!”

“Okay, so next time you ask I’ll say I’m calculating the probability of any world we visit having a mammal species we recognise as dogs.”

“ _Are_ you?”

“No! I’m trying to work out why transmutation here doesn’t make any damn sense, but you said that was _boring_.”

“Look, buddy, I’m just telling you like it is, okay…”

* * *

Another couple cycles go by before Barry brings it up with anyone again, partly because opening up emotionally is and always will be terrifying and horrible, and partly because, y’know, the whole ‘perpetually running for their lives from some kind of eldritch horror beast bent on their destruction’ thing is just the slightest bit distracting.

“Hey, Lup?”

“Yeah, my dude?”

They’re a month and a half into this cycle, and the world this go round is barren of all life. They’re still triangulating where the Light fell, and other than that there’s fuck all to do, which has given Barry the kind of thinking time necessary for this conversation to finally happen.

Lup’s sat cross-legged on her bed, journals and books spread open around her, some on the bed and some floating in the air. Her door was open, the several-cycles-ago agreed-upon signal for ‘yeah sure I’m down to hang’, and Barry hadn’t been planning on doing this _right_ now before seeing that, but, well. Good a time as any.

“Can I, um. Can I talk to you about something?”

“Of course!” Lup says, gesturing Barry inside as all her books snap themselves shut and glide over to form a surprisingly neat pile against the far wall. Not surprising because the magic’s difficult, but because literally nothing else in this room is arranged neatly. “What’s up, homie?”

Barry lets the door swish shut, sits down on the bed, pulls in a deep breath and says, all in a rush, “Don’t take this the wrong way I’m not trying to pry or be a dick but um how did you realise you’re a girl?”

“...Gonna need you to say that again, but slower.”

“I– Fuck. You can tell me to fuck off, I’m _really_ trying not to– to pry, or be a dick, but. But. How, um, how did you know you’re a girl?”

There’s another long beat of silence, then Lup says, “Oh, _sweetheart_ ,” and pulls Barry into a full body hug.

The hugging seems to be a theme.

Barry hasn’t started crying yet, though, so hopefully this won’t be entirely as terrible as the first time.

“Okay, okay, so,” Lup starts as she disentangles them and shifts around so they’re sat side-by-side, thighs touching, “Think I was… in my teens, when being misgendered started to really fuck me up? But it took another, gods, a good decade for me to realise that I felt like garbage whenever someone called me ‘he’ ‘cause I’m not a boy.”

“And,” she continues, tracing an indeterminable pattern on the bedspread with a finger, “one day this guy we were staying with called us ‘boys’ and I flipped the fuck out, and then after Taako was doing damage control and he pointed out how sometimes people mistook us for girls, ‘cause we’re pretty and have long hair and humans are garbage, and I’d always _glow_ for ages after. And that, y’know, that was the eureka moment.”

Barry nods, a little shakily.

“So, you asking to work out if you’re dysphoric at all, or you trying to narrow down why?”

Gods, how she just _says things._

“I, um. The– The second one.”

“Definitely not one hundred percent a guy, then?”

“That– That’s the current hypothesis, yeah.”

“Cool cool cool. So, my plan for this evening was– well it was nothing, so I’m totally down for some gender affirmation instead. You ever had your nails done? Top dysphoria tip, getting your nails done is a _life-saver_.”

Lup waves a hand again, and at least a dozen bottles of nail polish float up from… the floor, somewhere, little gods how does she find _anything_ in here. All of them drop down onto the bed except one, a light blue that she grabs out the air and holds up next to Barry’s face.

“Been looking at this colour for _ages_ and getting reminded of your eyes,” she says, and that’s– Okay. That’s fine.

“I like it,” Barry manages to say, voice hoarse for any number of reasons, and Lup _beams_.

**Author's Note:**

> i am [here](http://notquiteaghost.tumblr.com) on tumblr, tho fair warning i never post taz anymore. or anything, consistently


End file.
